The Sorrows of Young Werther

This is goethe’s first novel. Written in diary form it tells the tale of an unhappy passionate young man hopelessly in love with Charlotte the wife of a friend - a man who he alternately admires and detests. ‘The sorrows of young werther’ became an important part of the ‘sturm und drang movement and greatly influenced later ‘Romanticism’. the work is semi-autobiographical - in 1772 two years before the novel was published Goethe had passed through a similar tempestuous period when he lost his heart to Charlotte buff who was at that time engaged to his friend Johann Christian kestner.